Interpersonal perceptions and consequences of depressive-significant other relationships: a naturalistic study of college roommates

We investigated social perceptions and consequences of depression and anxiety in roommate relationships. Mildly depressed, anxious but nondepressed, and nondepressed-nonanxious students (targets) and normal, same-sex roommates (a) rated the interpersonal impact on themselves of typical associations with their roommates and (b) judged their own interpersonal impact. Only depressed men received negative evaluations and emotional reactions from their roommates. However, depressed women reported more negative reactions to their normal roommates than vice versa. Finally, depressed targets perceived their interpersonal impact negatively, whereas their normal roommates perceived their own interpersonal impact as overly positive. These findings suggest that negative relationships between depressives and nondepressed others may be attributable, at least in part, to both participants' misperceptions of their social behavior and its consequences.     

Induction of depressive affect after prolonged exposure to a mildly depressed individual

Scores on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were periodically obtained from the roommates of college students who exhibited a persistent mild depression over a 3-month period. For comparative purposes, BDI scores were also obtained from roommates of individuals who were transiently depressed and from subjects with nondepressed roommates. In comparison with control subjects, the roommates of persistently depressed persons displayed a progressive increase in BDI score over the course of the study.     

Interpersonal concomitants and antecedents of depression among college students

Depressed college students were compared with other-psychopathology and normal controls regarding the relationship they developed with dormitory roommates during a 9-month period. Diagnostic status was periodically assessed via SADS interviews, thus also permitting identification of new cases of depression during the year. Psychosocial characteristics found to be uniquely associated with current depression were: (a) low social contact with roommates, (b) low enjoyability of these contacts, and (c) high life-event stress. Roommates of depressives reported low enjoyability of the relationship and high levels of aggressive behavior towards the depressive. No features were found to be uniquely associated with new cases before they became depressed; however, several antecedents of general psychopathology were identified.     

Interactions of depressed college students with their roommates: not necessarily negative

Coyne's (1976b) interactional theory of the social environment's role in maintaining depression suggests that depressed people create negative affect in others. This leads to a pattern of interactions between depressed individuals and others that is aversive to both parties and becomes a vicious circle. We examined interactions of 15 depressed and 15 nondepressed college students with their roommates. On questionnaires, roommates did indicate more rejection, dislike, and avoidance of the depressed students than of the nondepressed students, consistent with Coyne's theory, and depressed-student-roommate interactions were more personally involved (higher percentage of self-disclosure) and less positive than nondepressed-student-roommate interactions. The moods of both depressed students and their roommates were worse than those of controls before the interaction but, contrary to expectation, improved over the course of the interaction, whereas the moods of nondepressed students and their roommates did not change significantly. Implications of these results for Coyne's theory are discussed.     

Depressed and nondepressed content self-reference in mild depressives

The present research investigated the extent to which mild depressives and normals differed in their self-referent processing of personal information. In Experiment 1, these subjects made two types of ratings on depressed (e.g., bleak, dismal) and nondepressed (e.g., loyal, organized) content personal adjectives. Half of the adjectives in each content category were rated for a semantic attribute (Does this word have a specific meaning or relate to a specific situation?), whereas half were rated for degree of self-reference (Does this word describe you?). These ratings were followed immediately by an incidental recall task, in which subjects recalled as many of the adjectives as possible. Consistent with predictions generated from a content-specific self-schema model, normals displayed superior recall for self-referenced nondepressed content adjectives, when compared to recall for self-referenced depressed content adjectives and recall for semantic ratings (both depressed and nondepressed content). In contrast, mild depressives exhibited enhanced self-referent recall for both types of content, when compared to their recall for semantic adjectives. This finding suggested that mild depressives utilize a self-schema which incorporates both depressed and nondepressed content. Experiment 2 explored this suggestion further by substituting an other-referent rating task (Does this word describe Pierre Trudeau?) for the semantic judgment used in Experiment 1. Again, consistent with a content-specific self-schema model, normals displayed superior recall only for self-referenced nondepressed adjectives. Mild depressives, however, showed enhanced self-referent recall, relative to other-referent recall, only for depressed content adjectives. For nondepressed content, mild depressives did not distinguish between the self- and other-referent conditions. This finding hinted that the nondepressed component of the mild depressives self-schema may operate at a somewhat reduced effectiveness, but only when required to differentiate between self and others.     

Receipt of negative feedback is related to increased negative feedback seeking among individuals with depressive symptoms

In recent years, numerous studies have demonstrated a link between positive and negative feedback seeking by depressed individuals, interpersonal rejection, and depression chronicity. Nonetheless, many of the specific interpersonal patterns underlying these links have yet to be clearly specified. One important lingering question concerns how depressed individuals respond to negative evaluation or feedback from others, because continued negative feedback seeking could place depressed people at risk for further rejection and continuation/exacerbation of depressive symptoms. Two studies were conducted to investigate the influence of negative feedback provisions from others on the feedback seeking behaviors of individuals with depressive symptoms. The results from Study 1 indicated an increased tendency to seek negative feedback among depressive individuals in association with an independent negative evaluation by their college roommates. Using a sample of newlywed couples, Study 2 extended this finding by demonstrating that, when directly provided with negative feedback from their spouses, individuals with depressive symptomatology actively sought further negative feedback, while those without such symptoms did not. Together, the results from these studies suggest that depressed individuals are likely to respond to negative evaluation and feedback from others with behaviors that could place them at risk for further rejection and continuing, if not worsening problems with depression.     

Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Differences in Interpersonal Perceptions

The purpose of this research was to study the patterns of interpersonal behavior of depressed students. Depressed participants rated themselves lower than non-depressed controls on assertiveness and initiation of interactions and significantly higher than controls on concern about what others think, introversion, and submissiveness. Depressed participants also scored significantly higher than controls on measures of dependency, self-criticism, and the need to please others. Ratings of depressed participants by their roommates were not correlated with depressed participants' self-reports. In contrast, most subscale self-ratings and roommate ratings for the nondepressed participants and their roommates were significantly correlated.     

Increasing acquaintanceship and complementarity of behavioral styles and personality traits among college roommates

Robert Carson's principle of complementarity asserts that the behavioral styles of interaction partners tend to complement each other by encouraging individuals to act opposite in terms of dominance and similar in terms of warmth. The principles of complementarity further hypothesize that as relationships progress through multiple interactions, the behavioral styles of its members will be altered to increase complementarity. To examine this acquaintanceship hypothesis, the behavioral styles and personalities of 102 college roommate dyads were assessed after living together for 2 weeks and again after living together for 15 weeks. Consistent with the acquaintanceship hypothesis, after 2 weeks the behavioral styles of roommates did not complement each other; however, after 15 weeks, the behavioral styles of roommates strongly complemented each other. In contrast to the change in complementarity observed in roommates' behavioral styles, participants' perceptions of their own personalities were relatively unaffected by the personalities of their roommates.     

Depressed and nondepressed students: differences in interpersonal perceptions

The purpose of this research was to study the patterns of interpersonal behavior of depressed students. Depressed participants rated themselves lower than non-depressed controls on assertiveness and initiation of interactions and significantly higher than controls on concern about what others think, introversion, and submissiveness. Depressed participants also scored significantly higher than controls on measures of dependency, self-criticism, and the need to please others. Ratings of depressed participants by their roommates were not correlated with depressed participants' self-reports. In contrast, most subscale self-ratings and roommate ratings for the nondepressed participants and their roommates were significantly correlated.     

Interpersonal behaviors and friendship in a Chinese culture

This research is designed to assess the links between interpersonal behaviors and relationship development. A measure of friendship, labeled 'communion', was developed that focused exclusively on the characteristics of the relationship itself. It was hypothesized that greater use by both parties of behaviors promoting the interests of the other, 'beneficence', and of behaviors respecting the rights of the other, 'restraint', would result in greater communion between the roommates by the end of their first 6 months together. Both dimensions of behavior proved to be related to communion, although beneficence by both parties was relatively stronger than restraint. These findings were discussed in terms of other types of relationships where there is less freedom of involvement and greater hierarchy.     

Self-discrepancies in clinical depression and social phobia: cognitive structures that underlie emotional disorders?

Previous research indicates that self-discrepancies are cognitive structures that can induce emotional discomfort. The present study compared clinically depressed and social phobic subjects (plus controls) to determine whether different self-discrepancies were associated with the two disorders. In Part 1, it was shown that the depressives possessed the greatest discrepancy between their actual and ideal/own self-states, whereas the social phobics possessed the greatest discrepancy between their actual and ought/other self-states. In a later, ostensibly unrelated study, subjects responded verbally to questions about other people while their mood changes, skin conductance responses, and verbalizations were recorded. The questions included attributes from the subject's ideal and ought self-states that were mismatches with attributes from his or her actual self, as well as mismatch attributes from other subjects. Priming with self-referential mismatches induced momentary syndromes of dejection or agitation (depending on the type of mismatch). The depressives and social phobics showed the greatest increases in dejection and agitation, respectively, according to their dominant self-discrepancy. The results suggest that specific cognitive structures may underlie clinical depression and anxiety.     

Allure of negative feedback: self-verification strivings among depressed persons.

We propose that people with negative self-views are rejected because they gravitate to partners who view them unfavorably. In relation to nondepressed college students (n = 28), depressives (n = 13) preferred interaction partners who evaluated them unfavorably (Study 1). Similarly, in relation to nondepressives (n = 106), depressives (n = 10) preferred friends or dating partners who evaluated them unfavorably (Study 2). Dysphorics (n = 6) were more inclined to seek unfavorable feedback from their roommates than were nondepressives (n = 16); feedback-seeking activities of dysphorics were also associated with later rejection (Study 3). Finally, people with negative self-views (n = 37) preferentially solicited unfavorable feedback, although receiving such feedback made them unhappy, in comparison with people with positive self-views (n = 42; Study 4). It seems a desire for self-verification compels people with negative self-views to seek unfavorable appraisals.     

Personality, Self-Disclosure and Friendship Between Chinese University Roommates

The present study examined the relations among personality perceptions, self-disclosing behavior, and friendship strength between Chinese roommates. These variables are rarely measured together and, when jointly assessed, allow for the disentanglment of personality factors from the social behavior of self-disclosure, making it possible to assess the role of self-disclosure behavior in the nexus of personality perceptions relating to friendship. One hundred and thirty-one university students rated their own and their roommate's personality, their self-disclosing behavior, and the strength of their friendship six months after being assigned to room together. It was found that self-ratings on the personality dimension of application were related both to one's friendship ratings and one's self-disclosing behavior, suggesting that personality variation is responsible for some of the well-established (Collins and Miller, 1994) links between self-disclosure and friendship strength. After controlling for self-rated application, it was found that both the respondent's and the roommate's self-disclosing behavior contributed separately to increasing the respondent's friendship ratings, as has also been found in Western research. Surprisingly, respondent self-disclosure was unrelated to how respondents perceived their roommates. However, the perceived roommate qualities of helpfulness and intellect were associated with the respondent's friendship ratings, suggesting that other, unmeasured social behaviors are being exchanged between roommates to enhance their friendship. Future research should examine these other behavioral mediators of friendship, so that we can develop a behavioral topology for this important social relationship and link these behaviors to dimensions of interpersonal perception.     

When depression breeds contempt: reassurance seeking, self-esteem, and rejection of depressed college students by their roommates.

To test Coyne's (1976b) theory of depression, students' levels of depressive symptoms, reassurance seeking, and self-esteem were assessed at Time 1, and their same-gender roommates' appraisals of them were assessed 5 weeks later. Mildly depressed students engaged in the type of reassurance seeking described by Coyne. Among men, but not women, mildly depressed students were rejected if they strongly sought reassurance and had low self-esteem but not if they did not seek reassurance or had high self-esteem. Although induction of depressed symptoms in roommates did occur, this contagion effect did not account for the depression-rejection relationship. The prediction that unsupportive, intolerant, or unempathic others would be particularly likely to respond with rejection to reassurance-seeking depressed students with low self-esteem received partial support. Implications for future work on the interpersonal aspects of depression are discussed.     

Depression,self-focus,and social interaction

The accuracy of depressed and nondepressed subjects' perceptions of their own and a social interactional partner's performance was investigated. Twenty depressed and twenty nondepressed college students participated in dyadic interactions and then rated their own and their partner's social behavior. The interactions were also rated by objective coders. Depressed subjects were differentiated from nondepressed subjects on several measures by both the coders and the subjects. Depressed subjects' self-ratings were correlated with the coders' ratings more often than were the nondepressives' ratings, suggesting depressives provided more accurate self-observations. Contrary to prediction, depressives were also more accurate in judging their partner's behavior. Depressives experienced heightened levels of self-focused attention, but this attentional focus did not mediate the relationship between depression level and self-accuracy. Finally, an analysis of the verbal statements suggests that performance differences between depressives and nondepressives may be a function of the quantity, rather than the quality, of the verbal production.     

Efficiency and automaticity of self-schema processing in clinical depressives

In this study, female clinical depressives and nondepressed control subjects made a series of self-referent personality judgments concerning depressed and nondepressed content personal adjectives. Employing rating times (RTs) for the personality decisions as a dependent measure, it was found that both clinical depressives and nondepressed psychiatric controls processed self-schema congruent content more efficiently (with quicker RTs), than incongruent content. To further test for the automaticity of self-schema processing, half the depressed and nondepressed adjectives were rated while subjects held six digits in memory (a concurrent memory load). Here it was found that the independent variable of memory load (zero vs. six digits) did not interact significantly with the remaining independent variables of groups (clinical depressives, psychiatric nondepressives, normal nondepressives), decision type (yes, no), and adjective content (depressed, nondepressed). The lack of any interactions involving the memory load factor provides initial evidence for self-schema processing as an automatic process, rather than as a process that demands attentional capacity.This research was supported, in part, by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship to Michael R. MacDonald.     

Positive life events, attributional style, and hopefulness: testing a model of recovery from depression

A model of a recovery process from depression that is compatible with the hopelessness theory of depressive onset is proposed. This model predicts that depressives who have an enhancing attributional style for positive events (i.e., make global, stable attributions for such events) will be more likely to regain hopefulness and, thereby, recover from depression, when positive events occur. This prediction was tested by following a group of depressed college students longitudinally for 6 weeks. Although neither positive events alone nor attributional style alone predicted reduction in hopelessness, depressives who both showed the enhancing attributional style for positive events and experienced more positive events showed dramatic reductions in hopelessness which were accompanied by remission of depressive symptoms. Thus, attributional style for positive events may be a factor that enables some depressives to recover when positive events occur in their lives.     

The power of love: mediation of rejection in roommate relationships of dependents and self-critics

This research examined roommate responses to dependent and self-critical personality styles in the hope of finding individuals for whom rejection may be more likely. Interpersonal traits associated with dependency and self-criticism along the love and dominance axes of the Circumplex also were investigated to clarify patterns contributing to roommate rejection. Both dependents and self-critics were more depressed throughout the year. Dependents, however, were perceived as more submissive and loving and were better accepted by roommates. Self-critics were seen as submissive and hostile and were more likely to be rejected. Structural equation modeling indicated that the personality-rejection effects were mediated by perceived interpersonal traits along the love axis and their associated affective consequences for roommates.     

The accuracy of roommate ratings of behaviors versus beliefs

We evaluated the accuracy of peer ratings of roommates’ personality characteristics, against roommate self-ratings, as a function of rating domain observability. Instead of the usual ratings of broad personality traits, however, our domains represented peer ratings of narrow exemplars of personality traits. Specifically, we compared roommate ratings on (a) observable trait-related behaviors with (b) unobservable trait-related attitudes or beliefs. We observed greater self-peer agreement in rating behaviors, in general, than in rating beliefs. We also observed greater tendency of raters to adopt an assumed similarity heuristic when judging their roommates’ attitudes and beliefs than their behaviors. We discuss the contribution of these findings to understanding the determinants of accuracy in personality judgments and developing best practices for personality assessment.     

Similarity of trait construal and consensus in interpersonal perception

This study examined the roles of similarity of trait construal and length of acquaintanceship in interpersonal consensus. Pairs of roommates were asked to rate a mutual acquaintance on six ambiguous traits and to describe their behavioral definitions of those traits. They were then asked to rate the acquaintance again, once on the basis of their own definition of the trait and then on the basis of their roommate’s definition of the trait. Consensus was greater when roommates based their judgments on the same, shared trait definitions than when they based their judgments on their own unshared trait definitions. Furthermore, those roommates who reported similar trait construals exhibited significantly higher consensus in their initial unrestricted judgments of the mutual acquaintance than did those whose trait construals were dissimilar. Length of acquaintance appeared unrelated to similarity of trait construal and consensus. Discussion focuses on trait construal, interpersonal agreement, and social judgment.